DVD in our daily life

In the today digital life, we cannot separate our multimedia activity with DVD. From recent movie distribution and software installation, it's will be distributed via DVD format.
DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than compact discs while having the same dimensions. DVD came to override the limitation from data density CD media.
DVD offer data capacity up to 15 GB ( DVD-18 Standard), while CD only up to 870 MB. It's had lot of gap between them. It's considered the great leap of digital age. With 4,3 GB (DVD-4 standard, most common standard on market), you can pack high definition movie and various subtitles. It's also give more space for backup purpose.
Lot of data space sometime correlate with audio and video purpose. And for audio and video purpose, you can use ImTOO DVD Ripper (for pc) or ImTOO DVD Ripper for Mac. It's give you freedom to convert any video or audio from DVD then save it to harddisk. You can choose any format whether it's MPG, AVI, DIVX, XVID, WMA or anything else. Another key feature is you can add your own subtitles, and you can use built in simple video editor for cropping, splitting, or merging. You had mobile devices?, no problem, simply you can sync it to your mobile device like iphone or android base devices. This feature work seamless because it's has full compability with lot of mobile device. The value added feature is you can give simple to moderate video/audio effect to that software.
And for the price less than 80 bucks, it's really awesome software.

Space Goings On for December

Finally, after almost 3 years we will be treated to a Total Lunar Eclipse starting at 1:32 am EST. December 21. I took the above image during the last Total Lunar Eclipse, February 20, 2008. If you live in North America and miss this one you'll be waiting awhile for the next...April 2014. If you look real close, preferably with binocs just before and right after totality you'll see a beautiful turquoise color, like the above image.

During a Lunar Eclipse, the Earth comes between the Sun and the Moon, you see the reddish brown on the Moon as the result of the Sunlight going through the Earth's stratosphere which absorbs the blues and allows the reds through to the Moon's surface, much like our lower atmosphere does during Sunrises/sets. Just before and after totality some of the Sunlight reaches into the Ozone layer which absorbs the reds and allows the blues through to the Lunar surface, just an fyi. Later that day, we have the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, now the good thing about that is after it occurs the days will be getting longer, sweet.


December 13th look to the East for the Geminids Meteor Shower, they have actually started right now but will peak in numbers around 2 am, EST. December 14. If not for my Fisheye lens I would not have been so lucky to capture the low Geminid back in 2008. I was actually out to capture an Ursid Meteor in the Big Dipper near the end of December when by a total fluke caught the latecomer Geminid. Cool thing about low meteors is the dust in the lower atmosphere tends to make them more colorful, like the green above.


On December 18th the Moon and Pleiades will be getting together. If you can score a pair of binocs do so. They are a perfect celestial couple and look awesome through them and since the Moon will be near full it will kind of wash out the Pleiades, the binocs will help make them more visible. I will give reminders here as well and weather permitting take and post the images here.

A New Song

So, this is what I've been doing for the last 5 months. I mentioned in my last post that I was working with some talented musicians, well we have a name for our group now and our first recorded song. The name of the song , "Restless Dreams", the name of the group, "Soul Reviver".

But to me it's really not about the music as much as it is about the friendships that have developed in the group, Dennis Perry on Bass, Dale Kostyk on Drums and did the mixdown on the song, and our fearless leader, singer, songwriter Guitarist Ed Saraka, the man who got it all started last July. I've known Ed for some 25 years and when he gave me the call to join the project I thought Ed's involved, gonna be good. The call came at a point in my life when I was wondering what to do next, my life hadn't turned out quite the way I planned, maybe joining a rock and roll group will make it all better, hey God does work in mysterious ways.

Restless Dreams was written at a turning point in my life, you know when you come to a point in your life when you realize you've made mistakes and look within yourself and find there is nothing you can do, or anyone else for that matter, so you make a choice, look to a higher power, ie God and realize crap I should have done this a long time ago, God forgives you, you forgive yourself (the hardest part) and move on, the end. But not really the end, always doubts, we are after all only human, that's why it's nice to have God 24/7 to pull us back into line again when we doubt about our self worth, our purpose.

As far as Blackholes and astrostuff look for more posts, if only as Anna suggested the odd image or so.

Where to Find Astronomy Videos And Photo Galleries Online

I have another great guest post from education writer Karen Schweitzer. Karen is the About.com Guide to Business School. She also writes about pharmacy technician certification for PharmacyTechnicianCertification.com.



Browsing astronomy video and photo galleries is a great way to learn more about space and get a look at things you might otherwise never see. The following ten sites host thousands of videos and images for your viewing pleasure.



Space.com Video Collection - Space.com has assembled hundreds of astronomy videos from around the web and put them in one easy-to-access collection. More than 500 videos can be view directly in Space.com's video player.



ScienceDaily Video Collection - ScienceDaily, a site that reports on the latest science news, hosts a large selection of astronomy videos. Videos include clips of the moon, planets, asteroids, meteors, stars, black holes, space exploration, and much more.



Sixty Symbols Video Collection - Created by the University of Nottingham, Sixty Symbols provides an interesting library of videos about the symbols of physics and astronomy. The site also links to their Flickr photo collection.





Discovery.com Video Collection - Discovery.com has an excellent collection of videos for space and science enthusiasts. The videos feature the top 10 greatest discoveries in astronomy.


National Geographic Video Collection - National Geographic offers dozens of high-quality space videos in their online science video collection. Videos cover everything from the latest news in space and shuttle missions to forces of nature.


NASA Image Gallery - NASA offers a wide range of videos and images on their site. Photos include images from the Kennedy Space Center, NASA aircraft, aeronautics facilities, and research centers. Visitors can browse collections or search for images using NASA's image exchange engine.


Hubble Gallery - The Hubble Site offers a huge selection of images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. Site visitors can browse individual images, search albums, or tour entire image galleries.




Astronomy Magazine's Online Reader Gallery - Astronomy Magazine posts a wide range of images snapped by astrophotographers from around the world. Registered members can leave comments on the images or submit their own photo. Image categories include the sun and moon, comets, star clusters, galaxies, and nebulae.

NOAO Image Gallery - This site features pictures taken with the facilities of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO). The gallery includes images of the sun, moon, stars, solar system, nebulae, galaxies, telescopes, and more.


APOD Archives - Created by Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell, Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) features the largest collection of annotated astronomy images on the web. Archives include images that have been posted daily from 1995 to present day.


Thanks a lot Karen, I little update about me, I have been very fortunate to hook up with some talented musicians and am getting back to creating music with the main goal of putting a CD of originals together within the year, lot easier to write stuff when you understand more about who you are, very exciting times, and I Thank God for this.

I will be getting back into posting more regularly in the future, thanks for all your kind comments and emails, you have all been just super.